A common method of receiving feedback from customers of businesses is through the use of response forms such as comment cards. An owner of a business can use the responses gleaned from his customers to improve services, spot unsatisfactory areas of his products or services or to evaluate marketing techniques and potential. In short, the comments of a customer who has just patronized an establishment are one of the most powerful sources of information to the owner of the business. In the past, the inconvenience to the customer of filling out a response form or using other types of customer surveys have reduced the effectiveness and accuracy of the comments received. For example, if a response form takes more than just a few seconds for a customer to fill out, chances are that the average customer will not bother to fill out the form unless he is especially dissatisfied or satisfied with some area of the business. This inconvenience results in inaccurate data compiled from the system.
Other systems such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,023,435 and 5,198,642 use a method wherein the total questions desired be queried to customers of the establishment are broken down into subgroups, and a particular customer is only required to answer a few of these questions. These systems then directly process the forms by identifying each form from a bar or block coding area on the form that describes the format and questions of the form. Once the format is identified, the forms are directly processed to extract data from them, and a tabulation database is created on a form-by-form basis. These systems are useful but require a customer to utilize a standardized form format due to the direct processing requirements of the system. The forms for such systems also must be printed with a special combination of graphite and non-graphite inks to enable direct processing of the forms. Also, printing must be done based on tight positioning alignment and trimming tolerances.
Accordingly, a need has arisen for a system for soliciting responses from customers that will encourage the accurate compilation of data for a customer database while processing response forms of an infinite variety of formats.